NEWARK — The schoolyard triple slaying trial resumes this morning in Superior Court with the detective who processed and photographed the crime scene expected to testify for the prosecution.

Detective Michael Bozsolak of the Essex County Prosecutor's Office was dispatched to Newark’s Mount Vernon School following the fatal shooting of three college-bound friends and wounding of a fourth that night, on Aug. 4, 2007.

His appearance comes on the fourth day of the murder trial of Alexander Alfaro, one of six defendants charged with the killing, which prosecutors believe was gang-related.

Alfaro, 20, is charged with three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, robbery and conspiracy charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

His half-brother, Rodolfo Godinez, 27, was convicted on all counts at the first trial last spring. In September, Melvin Jovel, 21, admitted to being the gunman.

Prosecutors say the six young men set upon the victims that night in what began as a robbery. Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18, were shot in the head and killed. Terrance’s sister, Natasha, 19 at the time, was shot in the head but survived. She testified last week, providing a similar account to the one she gave at Godinez’s trial.

Aeriel, now 23, remembers two of the defendants, but Alfaro is not among them.

Sixteen years old at the time, prosecutors say Alfaro repeatedly slashed Hightower with a machete that night, a weapon Godinez allegedly told him to bring from home. Alfaro admitted to the machete attack in a statement to police that will be played in the coming days, prosecutors said.

No forensic evidence links Alfaro to the crime scene, though assistant prosecutor Thomas McTigue said Bozsolak’s testimony will “show the completeness of the investigation,” and will speak to the conspiracy charges.

In his opening statement last week, Alfaro's attorney, Raymond Morasse, told the jury that none of the evidence collected "in any way, shape or form, relates to Alexander Alfaro or implicates him in this horrible tragedy."